And to prove how effective this 'police-pastors' collaboration is, Williams says to look at the recent calm in gang related crime in the city since the Easter weekend. He says that pause in violence is due to what you would call a religious intervention with the police and Rev. Papouloute. Now it may be hard to envision a bunch of feared street gangsters bowing their heads and praying - but Williams says that's exactly what happened and that session on spiritual healing has made a difference.
DCP Chester Williams, Commander of Operations
"Into the Easter weekend we were experiencing a spate of shooting in Mayflower/bakatown area as well as the St. Martin's area. so what we did was that we brought in all the players from within those 3 communities to a meeting or an intervention at the Queen St. police station training room and I have invited Bishop Papouloute to be a part of that intervention. For the first time we are incorporate the church into our intervention and again in that intervention session, it was like no other, because we had Bishop Papouloute who minister to these young men the word of God after he was over and what he did was that he called them all to pray and I looked to see what would have been the reaction of these young men when he said let us all pray. To my surprise, they all stood up and they prayed and they prayed even better than I did, which goes to show that these young men are also close to God. They know the prayers and these sorts of things so. I think all they need is a little bit of guidance and that session we had with them and Bishop Papouloute was an extremely good session then the entire area had gone quiet. They all gave the commitment that they will listen and they will work with us to ensure that violence stops and so far, they have been holding true to their words."
Williams plans on continuing this effort with the various church groups.
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